


Seasickness

by courtneybgood



Category: National Theatre, Treasure Island - Lavery, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Masturbation, Nightmares, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:01:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courtneybgood/pseuds/courtneybgood
Summary: Jim couldn't bear to leave Long John Silver's belongings on the island, so she takes them home with her, and tries to process her loss.
Relationships: Jim Hawkins/John Silver, Jim Hawkins/Long John Silver
Comments: 19
Kudos: 16





	Seasickness

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for descriptions of past Major character death, and more notably, child abuse, grooming, and manipulation, as well as a non-explicit description of an ambiguously aged Jim Hawkins picturing herself in sexual scenarios with an older man. I'll give you one guess as to who.

It seemed wrong to leave his few belongings on the island. They were waiting for him in a canvas knapsack, back amongst the great rising boils where the pirates had nested. Ready to be slung over his shoulder. I knew it was his because I had seen him use it as a pillow every night aboard the Hispaniola. 

I took it back aboard the ship. I could have tossed it overboard. I think Doctor Livesey wanted me to. I could have sold it once we reached land, I suppose, but then again. Who would want an old sea dog's things? What could he have owned? Salty, stained clothes, inscrutable trinkets, a couple of dirty, seafaring coats? I have no need for money, either, not after we loaded our pockets with the very coin that Ben Gunn used to kill Long John Silver and all his crew. 

The voyage back, I kept it stowed in his empty hammock. Unopened, undisturbed. He might come back to it. He might need somewhere to lay his head.

When we docked in Bristol, I went back down below deck.

I took the sack out of the hammock and unfurled it on the ground. On the top, his brown leather coat, bundled. Underneath, two greying shirts, soft. I took them out gingerly, like they were small, live animals. One is a little bloody. He’s going to catch me going through his things. A knife, one I’ve never seen before, with a short blade and a curved, tortoiseshell handle. Rolled up, threadbare socks. I don’t cry. Two needles jabbed into a scrap of leather. A spool of white thread. A pair of worn-out drawers, with button front closures. I dropped those quickly. I’d thought they must have been a handkerchief or rag. I hadn’t meant to touch them. I shouldn’t have. His green, woolen bonnet. Two golden coins. Upon later presenting them to Squire, he told me they looked to be from China.

Who would want an old sea dog’s things? 

I drew the cords of the sack back up, swallowing up his things and shoved them back down so they all fit. It was packed lumpier than before. 

I carried the sack over one shoulder and carried my own trunk with my other hand as we disembarked our Hispaniola. I didn’t look at Squire, or Doctor, as if they could somehow see through the canvas and see its contents, as if they know, innately, that I just accidentally touched Long John’s drawers. It’s just a sack, and they pay it no mind. With our coin, we paid for a coach that rattled us all the way back home, back to Black Cove. I waited for months before I started wearing his coat. 

-

I still have trouble sleeping. My nightmares are still of one-legged men. It is like I am still waiting to meet one. Some horrible, peg-legged, broad fellow who will strangle me on sight. Most nights, the mattress is too sturdy beneath me. At night I open up the windows wide, so I can smell the salt air, or at least imagine I am smelling it. Inhale. _I am back in the galley._ Exhale. 

What has he done to me? 

Other smells, too. That earthy, rindy potato peel smell makes me choke up one night while preparing a soup with Grandma. How humiliating! Peeling potatoes moves me almost to tears! I tell Grandma it’s all the steam in my face and go stand on the stoop. Drunks are swaying outside, sharing a pipe. They call to me, “Here, boy, have some grog with us! Come try this, eh, lad?” I am not scared of them. I watch their silhouettes in the lamplight, and they watch mine, then grow bored, stumble away. Men cannot trick me anymore.

I haven’t told Grandma our entire tale. She knows: pirates, betrayal, and stranded! Island, treasure, collapse, ship, back home. I was in danger, and now I am safe. This coat? This coat, Grandma, is a hand-me-down. 

When I wear it, his coattails drag just slightly on the floor. In an embarrassing show of pity and tolerance, Doctor Livesay offers to hem the edges of it up. She, of course, knows that it is his coat. She recognises it, so does Squire. They do not comment on it. His battered, brown leather jacket keeps me warm when I do go walking. I go for far more walks, now. Down to the cove itself, the cove of Black Cove. I don’t know why I didn’t play down here more as a child. I don’t know why I never sailed before I sailed.

Nobody else seems sad. I don’t expect that anybody wishes to ever see another pirate again, and I am mostly of their mind. Do they have nightmares too? _Pieces of eight, pieces of eight!_ I wake up crying, and close the window.

-

Ben works with us at the Admiral Benbow now. He is a good help to me, and to Grandma. Grandma loves him. Everybody loves him. He is funny, and he is kind. He works hard and complains very little. I think he is mostly glad of the company. He still talks to himself, but as a couple of friends might bicker, not the same violent, swirling argument. He’s not as scared. 

He is smart-as-paint, like me. That still hurts. 

Ben Gunn, and I. Two cabin boygirls. Ben spent two years on that island (two years!). He found Silver sorely lacking, and he was right too. That man was monstrous. On that island, Ben had two years to think on how (his friend) Silver betrayed him. That is a lot of time to think. 

Every evening, I go walking. I tell myself that he was a villain and a scoundrel. I wear his coat down to the cove and sit on the coarse sand. 

“You sit all alone. You walk all this way just to get away from other people? _‘Course she did, why’re you asking?_ Why’d you follow her? _Because we wanted to talk to her._ Then talk to her! - _I am!”_

Ben drops down on the sand behind me. His hair is cut neatly now, cropped, and clean. No clay paint on his face. He looks younger than he did on the island. I offer him a smile. 

“It’s alright, Ben.” I do want to be alone. But his nervous babble helps me remember that I don’t hate him. I don’t even hate him for what he let happen. I just feel something _,_ something tired and old and swelling. Battering me. Master Storm. 

“Have I done wrong?” He asks, tilting his head onto my shoulder. I nuzzle into his hair. 

  
“No. I just wanted to watch the waves, I think.” 

“On Island,” he chirps, “On Island, Ben Gunn would - _Not ‘Ben Gunn’, you’re Ben Gunn -_ Sorry! _I_ would go sit on the beach and watch the big crashing waves, _crash, crash, crash_ when I felt sad, and I would think, think about drowning!” He speaks of this without even a shade of embarrassment or remorse. It is simply a fact about Ben Gunn. A Gunn-fact, Grandma calls them. Alarming, surprising, true. He’s full of them. I sniff, nod against him. 

“Well, I am not thinking about drowning. I was just thinking about sailing. Little boats come in and out of this cove, they have since I was small. But I never even stepped foot on one, until the Hispaniola.” 

“A real ship. Big ship.” Ben remarks. 

“Yes.” I agree. 

“Bigger than the Walrus.” He adds, gazing out at a lone fishing boat that pitches about, like a marble on a table. Ben doesn’t talk about his time as the cabin boy on Flint’s ship. I wonder how much he even remembers. 

“...What was it like?” I hazard, gently squeezing his arm. I am so hungry for detail, for stories. 

He frowns. 

“The food was good. When Silver was the one cooking.” 

It hurts, but oh, how it takes me aback! I’ve never heard anyone else praise his cooking. But it was good. He was a pirate, and a he was a good cook. Then, the pair of us are laughing. Bright, surprising sounds, ringing across the cove.

The food was good! The food was rich and warm and salty, so much better than anything I expected sailors to eat. 

“...But he wasn’t the cook? That wasn’t his real job.” 

Ben shakes his head. “Silver was the Quartermaster, and a - _Liar, murderer!_ He was that too, - _that most!”_ He’s not smiling anymore, and neither am I. He turns to glare at me. 

“We don’t want to talk about our Bad Friend. Why do you want to talk about him?” 

“I don’t!” I snap, face hot. Ben can be such a child. 

“ _S_ _he asked us!_ Yeah, you asked us!”

“I only asked you what it was _like_ , on the Walrus!” 

“But that’s not what you wanted to know,” Ben mutters darkly, and I look away, covering my face with my hands. 

“Ben Gunn, stop.” I hiss, angry again. I don’t want to be sat here, back in Black Cove, wearing this stupid, battered coat. Abruptly, I shrug it off, like it’s burning my skin. 

Ben goes to touch it. On instinct, I smack his hand away, hard, much harder than necessary. He flinches and shrinks, cowering, his spine curling. I cover my mouth again, appalled at myself. Ben is my friend. 

“I’m sorry.” I whimper, shaking my head. He stares at me with wide eyes, scrawny shoulders drawn up to his ears.

“Are you going to hit me again for what I done?” He asks earnestly. 

“No.” I swear, reaching down, grabbing his hand. “That was cruel of me, Ben. I don’t know why I did that.”

“You thought I’d steal it.” He explains, looking at his bony hand in mine. I shake my head, then stop. I suppose I was worried he might. 

“Do you know whose coat this is, Ben?” I ask quietly, ashamed. 

“It was our friend Silver’s.” He replies easily, looking back up at my face, but I am finding it very hard to look at him. “Now it’s yours.” 

When I do look up, there’s no judgment in his eyes. No spite. It’s just another Gunn-fact. I sniff, tuck my head back on his shoulder.

-

That night, I didn't have any dreams. Just a thick, heavy sleep. 

The night after that, it’s not a nightmare, but still, I wake up shaking and damp all over. It’s warm, very warm, or maybe just I am. 

In the galley, it was always warm, the fire burning day and night. Silver would rise in the night to stoke it. In the galley, cooking, he would lean over me to reach the ingredients stowed on higher shelves. For a brief, unending moment, his chest would press lightly against the curve of my back, and I could feel his warmth right behind me. No man in my life has ever been as close to be as he could be. I don’t mean that he was my best friend, although he was, for those strange, quick weeks. I mean that he would clap his hand on my shoulder, pat me on the head, ruffle my hair. He would nudge me with his elbow, give me a lift up into the rigging, lean his shoulder against mine. Silver was so...tangible. 

Now that Ben lives here with us, on our good days we hug each other, grab each other, slap at each other's hands. Is Ben a man? If he is, then he is the one other man who’s ever touched me so unapologetically. But Ben doesn’t know when he was born, or how many times the Earth has circled the sun while he has stood upon it. We think that he is older than me. It doesn’t seem to me that he is any more of a grown-up than I am. 

Silver was a grown-up. A man. He was a grown-up pirate, who smelt like salt-pork and parrot and sweat. He didn’t smell good. His skin was always hot and patchy. I’m so warm. 

Heart thudding like I’m about to break into a stranger's home, I quietly open the door of my closet. On the high shelf, I keep his sack stowed. His coat is the only article I let hang alongside my clothes. I pull the sack down, but I underestimate the weight. It slips out of my grasp, hits the floor with a soft thud, unceremonious. 

Quickly, like I’m about to be caught, I pull open drawstrings, rifle, rifle. Here is shirt, the one with the two dark, small blood stains on the back. I pull it out completely, hold it up in front of me. This is what is left of him.

I stand up, set the shirt on the bed, and pull off my bed things until I am naked. Before I can let myself think about how horrible I might be, I pull on his shirt. It still smells like him. Oh God. I lay stomach down on the bed, then quickly pull the blankets up, over me, over my head. Smells like him. Warm. The dream. In the dream, leaning behind me, harder and harder. Up against me. Smell of his breath. His beard tickling my ear. _Up on deck, girl._ A quick, hard kiss. Always touching me, unrelenting and unabashed. Like he had any right to. He wore this shirt and this shirt smells like his sweat. My heart is going to worm out of my chest and beat underneath me on the sheets. I can’t breathe. 

I shove the blankets off of my head, gasp in cool air. Not drowning. I’m not drowning. He would never let that be. _This girl belongs to me_. I do?

After I finish, I can’t smell him anymore. I’m sweaty and hot all over alone in my firm bed. That’s when I start to feel these great waves of nausea. I hate Long John Silver. What has he done to me? I hate the rising queasiness in me, the wrongness of what I’ve done looking to be purged. It’s like I’m going to be sick. I think I’m going to be sick. 

Swaying, I rise from the bed like that little pitching fishing boat, and I scramble for my bedpan. I think that this is proof that I have become just a little bit evil. My body is trying to get rid of what I did. My face is hot with exertion. 

When the retching stops and my breathing slowly calms, I notice that a bit of my vomit has landed on the hem of his shirt. No. No, no no no no no. I tug it off, slowly, gingerly, like it is the ancient artifact of a dead king, like it should never even have touched skin. Water. All it will need is a little water. Hurriedly, I put my nightgown back on and sneak my way downstairs. I know which steps creak under weight, so I skip them, so I am silent. In the kitchen, I use a pitcher of water and a dishrag to clean the shirt like I’m restoring a painting, slowly, painstakingly. The only person in this inn better at tip-toeing and hiding than me is Ben Gunn. 

“Oh! Smells like sick!” He comments, voice loud and conversational. I nearly jump right out of my body, knocking the pitcher of water with my knee and sending it rolling across the floor. Water goes everywhere.

“Ben Gunn!” I hiss, eyes wide. 

“I scared you! Didn’t mean too! _You scared us!_ \- We weren’t scared!” He blurts. His eyes land on the sodden, sad shirt. “Why are you sneaking around in the night?” His hands are hidden behind his back. 

“Why are _you_?!” I demand, in an angry whisper. His expression melts into one of complete and utter guilt. Remorsefully, he brings his hand out from behind his back to reveal that he is clutching a wedge of cheese, roughly cut.

“Got hungry.” He admits, quiet, wincing. 

I rise to my feet, clutching the shirt. 

“I’m cleaning my shirt. I got sick in the night. I had a nightmare.” I tell him, forlorn. Ben nods, wide eyed. He reaches out for it. Terrified he will know it by sight, by touch, I pass it to him, because if I resist, he will grow suspicious. He lifts it. I am embarrassed by the wet patch where my vomit had almost stained it. It is out now, but the smell might remain. I stoop over, start to mop up the spilled water with my rag, while I watch him out of the corner of my eye. He looks at the front of the shirt, turns it, looks at the back. 

“This is one of our friend Silver’s shirts.” He remarks.

  
  
“No, it isn’t.” I snap. How could he know? I straighten up, reaching for it. “It’s just an old shirt, my father’s. It’s just a silly old shirt. Give it back. It was my father’s.” 

Ben shakes his head, and points to the bloodstains. 

“I was there, when Flint tickled him with his sword. _Damn near got my liver!_ Silver did cry. I help him take his shirt off, an’ Dick - _the Dandy, quick and handy,_ Dick the Dandy sews him shut. Needle goes in an’ out. Silver sleeps on his stomach all week every night, tossing, turning, talking to himself in his sleep. He sounds _mad.”_

Ben passes the shirt back to me. I hold it limply, watching Ben’s face in the dark. 

“Captain Flint stabbed Long John?” I ask. 

“The pirate, not the parrot.” Ben clarifies solemnly. “Silver an’ Billy Bones an’ Captain, they all fight lots and proper. But our friend Silver was scared, scared of Captain Flint. Captain Flint, _proper Captain, proper scary_ , would slice him - _like pork, butcher him up he would,_ if Silver didn’t behave.” 

I look at the bloodstains. How could I have done what I did in this shirt? 

Long John is dead. 

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about him.” I weep. Before the island, I used to sneer at boys and girls who cried at everything. I am not a child. I am Jim Hawkins, tough, dependable. Big brain. I am crying in my nightgown. 

Ben puts the cheese in his mouth, chewing furiously, and wraps his long arms around me. Pulling me into his chest. I let him.

“I will show you a secret.” He whispers.

Up in Ben’s room, he slides under his bed. I half expect him to disappear down a tunnel. Instead, he lifts a loose floorboard, fishes out something small, closed in the palm of his hand. Beckons me close, like he’s going to perform a magic trick. I shuffle forward on my knees. 

He unfurls his fingers. In his palm is a thin silver necklace, chain, rusted. It has a charm of a wooden bead that dangles from it. It is unremarkable.

“My friend Silver didn’t give this to me.” He whispers. “I waited till he was sleeping, an’ I took it from his neck!” Ben cracks into a wide smile, fastening the trinket around his neck. 

“When I wear it, I am safe from all bad spirits and all bad friends. It’s my lucky charm.”

“You took his lucky charm?” I ask weakly. Ben shakes his head forcefully. 

“No. It is lucky fer me, ‘cause it _was_ his.” He explains this slowly as if I am dimwitted. I think that maybe I am. I nod. 

He touches the bead, smiles slyly at me, takes off the trinket. It’s reburied, Ben’s treasure. He sets the floorboard back in place, walks me to the door of my bedroom. I am so glad of him. He pats my hand, wanders off down the hall. Not in the direction of his own room, but back towards the stairs. I imagine he is looking for more cheese. 

There are no more tears in me. Instead, I lay Silver’s coat on one side of my narrow bed, and lay myself next to it. 

It doesn’t smell like him anymore. I wear it too often. I listen to the crash of the surf against the cliffs, and eventually, I drift into a dreamless sleep. 


End file.
